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205 pages

English

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After centuries of white domination and decades of increasingly savage repression, freedom came to South Africa far later than elsewhere in the continent – and yet was marked by a commitment to non-racialism. Nelson Mandela’s Cabinet and government were made up of women and men of all races, and many spoke of the birth of a new “Rainbow Nation”. How did this come about? How did an African nationalist liberation movement resisting apartheid – a universally denounced violent expression of white supremacy – open its doors to other races, and whites in particular? And what did non-racialism mean? This is the real “miracle” of South Africa: that at the height of white supremacy and repression, black and white democrats – in their different organisations, coming from vastly different backgrounds and traditions – agreed on one thing: that the future for South Africa would be non-racial.

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Social History

HISTORY

Histoire

África

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History of Africa

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Africa

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Publié par	WITS University Press
Date de parution	01 juin 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781868147991
Langue	English

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THE ORIGINS OF NON-RACIALISM
WHITE OPPOSITION TO APARTHEID IN THE 1950s
THE ORIGINS OF NON-RACIALISM
WHITE OPPOSITION TO APARTHEID IN THE 1950s
DAVID EVERATT
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg
South Africa
http://witspress.wits.ac.za
Copyright David Everatt 2009
First published 2009
ISBN (print) 978-1-86814-500-3
ISBN (EPUB - IPG) 978-1-86814-799-1
ISBN (EPUB - ROW) 978-1-86814-800-4
ISBN (PDF) 978-1-86814-658-1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express permission, in writing, of both the copyright holders and the publisher.
Cover image adapted from the Freedom Charter Pamphlet:
Eli Weinberg, UWC Robben-Island Mayibuye Archives
Edited by Pat Tucker
Cover design by Hothouse South Africa
Layout and design by Hothouse South Africa
Printed and bound by Creda Communications
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the loves of my life, my wife Cathi, and my children, Josie and Jonathon.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1 Whites and the ANC, 1945-1950
Chapter 2 The emergence of white opposition to apartheid, 1950-1953
Chapter 3 Multiracialism: Communist plot or anti-Communist ploy?
Chapter 4 From CPSA to SACP via CST: Socialist responses to African nationalism, 1952-1954
Chapter 5 The South African Congress of Democrats
Chapter 6 The Liberal Party of South Africa
Chapter 7 Overhauling liberalism
Chapter 8 The Congress of the People
Chapter 9 The Freedom Charter and the politics of non-racialism, 1956-1960
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Books generate debts, and I owe many people far more than I will ever be able to repay. A few, however, deserve special mention.
This book began life as a doctoral thesis in the dark and gloomy days of the 1980s, and I owe my supervisor, the inimitable Stanley Trapido, far more than I knew when we worked together or even fully grasp now. His is one of the many voices in my head.
Secondly, to all the remarkable people who populate the pages of this book, many of whom I had the privilege of meeting, all of whom were unfailingly generous with their time, their private papers, their memories, their gossip and all of whom - from conservative liberal to radical Trotskyist - shared an indefatigable belief in the ultimate triumph of non-racialism over apartheid. Their generosity of spirit and commitment to the ideal of a democratic South Africa taught me more than they will ever know, and all I can offer is deeply sincere thanks and this book.
The original thesis was typed in the days when floppy discs were consider ed the height of technological sophistication. When I came to re-work the thesis into a book, floppy discs could reduce computers to hysterical laughter - but no more than that. So my thanks to Phindi Hlatswayo who painstakingly re-typed the entire thesis (onto a stiffy disc, as useful nowadays as a floppy disc ).
Raymond Suttner pushed me to publish, and I would never have done so without his prompting. He, Rupert Taylor and Gerry Mare all offered good advice on how to improve the manuscript, for which I am enormously grateful. I even took some of that advice!
And finally, family and friends, the people who have to look politely interested in lengthy mealtime perorations about obscure yet (surely) fascinating moments in the past - my thanks to you one and all. But don t imagine you re getting a free copy in return for listening .
List of abbreviations AAC All-African Convention ADP African Democratic Party AES Army Education Service ANC African National Congress ANCYL African National Congress Youth League APO African People s Organisation ARM African Resistance Movement CC Central Committee COD Congress of Democrats CoP Congress of the People COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions CNETU Council for Non-European Trade Unions CPSA Communist Party of South Africa CRL Civil Rights League CST colonialism of a special type DL Democratic League FRAC Franchise Action Committee FSAW Federation of South African Women FSU Friends of the Soviet Union LP Liberal Party of South Africa MP Member of Parliament MRC Multi-Racial Conference MYS Modern Youth Society NAC National Action Council NAD Native Affairs Department NCC National Consultative Committee NEC National Executive Committee NEUM Non-European unity Movement NIC Natal Indian Congress NNALA Northern Natal African Landowners Association NRC Native Representative Council NP National Party NUSAS National Union of South African Students PAC Pan Africanist Congress RDP Reconstruction and Development Programme SABRA South African Bureau of Racial Affairs SACOD South African Congress of Democrats SACP South African Communist Party SACPO South African Coloured People s Organisation SAIC South African Indian Congress SAIRR South African Institute of Race Relations SALA South African Liberal Association SALG South African Liberal Group SL Springbok League TIC Transvaal Indian Congress UDF United Democratic Front UN United Nations UNO United Nations Organisation UP United Party
Introduction
We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people 1
We, the people of South Africa Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity . 2
Among the most consistent threads in the discourse of liberation in South Africa was a commitment to non-racialism. How strong that thread was - unbreakable 3 according to some, distinctly fragile according to others 4 - can be debated. But from the 1955 Freedom Charter to the 1996 Constitution non-racialism has featured significantly in the canon of all anti-apartheid organisations. The same applies internationally.
But it has also become clear since democracy was ushered in, in 1994, that a critical weakness was the failure to define non-racialism, to give it content beyond that of a slogan or a self-evident good thing . 5 It made intuitive sense, uniting races where apartheid divided them. But beyond that, what was the meaning of non-racialism? The 1996 Constitution implicitly defined it as a democratic state where the rights of every citizen are equally protected by the law. But is non-racialism the same as formal equality? Is there no more to it than that, nothing to do with the actions or moral base of individuals? Is it a passive or an active state? Are there specific types of action required of a non-racialist, or is it all left to the state or political parties or courts to resolve? For example, should the erstwhile non-racialist follow the advice of Warren Beatty (in Bulworth) when he suggested that non-racial democrats should pursue a programme of voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended procreative racial deconstruction , by which was meant, he explained, everybody just gotta keep fuckin everybody till we re all the same color 6 ?
If for some reason this fails to appeal, does non-racialism require (some other types of) pro-action on the part of the would-be non-racialist? And if so, what form should this take? Is equity or redress involved, whereby the non-racialist can or should make amends for the racialism of the past? How, and to whom, and for how long? Who decides when enough is enough? And most importantly, how can this be done at an ethical level? How do we move beyond repentance and redress - the latter currently the focus of much state activity - and look to building new citizens and a new society on a new moral basis, where individuals are not immediately pigeonholed socially, economically, psychologically, intellectually or morally, by their race? How do we create spaces where citizens can leave behind the trappings of race and engage as fellow South Africans? There are no guidelines for being a genuinely non-racial citizen of the new South Africa.
Worryingly, no one - including the African National Congress (ANC)-led government - seems to know what a normal post-apartheid state looks like, or how we will know when we reach it. South Africa has been in a transition or undergoing transformation since 1994 - overwhelmingly, and appropriately, based on racial redress. But how will we know when South Africa has stopped becoming and has arrived?
There is a more compelling philosophical question underpinning the issue, namely is it possible for non-racialism to be realised under a nationalist government? Is non-racialism compatible with nationalism at all? Non-racialism was crafted by the African nationalist resistance movement in response to apartheid, itself a nationalist-fuelled ideology; but it remains questionable whether that same African National Congress is able to throw off the constraints and racial blinkers of nationalism and truly embrace non-racialism. Much of this book analyses the warnings - of radical Marxists, liberals, socialists, humanists and others from the 1950s - that nationalists, in the words of Moeletsi Mbeki (brother of the more famous Thabo), were not militant democrats:
African nationalism was a movement of the small, Westernised black elite that emerged under colonialism. Its fight was always for inclusion in the colonial system so that it, too, could benefit from the spoils of colonialism. 7
Ever since the African and Indian congresses formed an alliance, the approach has been equality under African leadership . Post-apartheid experience to date suggests that this is incompatible with non-racialism.
We live in an official non-racial democracy that insists on using the same racial classification system as apartheid in order to measure how far we have travelled from our shared, racist past. This is reasonable: disadvantage was created